Recliners comprise a small but very profitable segment of the upholstered furniture market. These reclining back chairs, with their extendable ottomans, are manufactured by several large U.S. firms in a variety of styles and price ranges. From a mechanical standpoint the chairs employ interconnected frame and lever elements which, when the seat back is inclined rearwardly, cause the ottoman to move from a retracted position into an extended position on which a seated subject's feet can rest.
Recliners have historically been manufactured in a tight seat construction or, in some cases, a simulated loose cushion construction. In either case the cushion base assembly has employed a "hard-edge" at the front rail of the base frame; hard edge meaning, in the furniture industry, that no spring induced resilience is effective at the front rail.
Only in recent years have manufacturers, seeking to achieve finer quality and higher style in recliners, began to use a fully loose cushion construction, but still with "hard-edge". It is a more expensive construction but commands a substantially higher price. The nature of hard edge construction has made it virtually impossible to eliminate cushion gap between the cushion and the front rail in recliners, however. Inadequate support for the cushion at the front rail when the ottoman is extended has also been an inherent shortcoming of loose cushion recliners.
Most loose cushion recliners now on the market are designed so that the ottoman retracts into a position immediately in front of the front rail of the seat frame. The cushion, supported by the cushion base assembly, extends forwardly of the frame, above the ottoman, for a distance equal to the thickness of the ottoman. When the ottoman is retracted it nestles neatly and unobtrusively under the front end of the cushion and against the front frame rail. In this position it supports the cushion. When the ottoman is extended, the forwardmost 11/2" to 3" portion of the cushion has no support. The result is unsatisfactory from both functional, sales/marketing, and aesthetic standpoints. The industry has long but unsuccessfully sought to remedy this defect.
The industry recognizes that a spring-edge would greatly increase comfort under the knees when the footrest is extended. This would justify a higher price. The difficulties inherent in the cushion overhang noted above, and, therefore, the required protrusion of any spring-edge below such overhang, have been considered insuperable and to date have baffled and thwarted the industry in its desire for a recliner spring-edge. Thus far, therefore, all loose cushion recliner styles have been without exception clipped to, snapped onto, or otherwise connected with the main span or body of the sinuous springs or other cushion base. This drastically limited their breadth of applicability, grossly circumscribed their capability to handle cushion overhang, and completely prevented their providing the necessity of a protruding lower upholstery wrapping-edge (or line) matching the equally protruding spring-edge required to be plumb with the cushion overhang.
To capsulize the situation, there were two problems considered insolvable. First, how to base a spring-edge able to support a cushion overhang as much as three inches (3") forward of the front edge of the front rail. Second, how to get a workable lower upholstery line (or wrapping-edge) vertically below the upper spring-edge, and therefore also as much as three inches (3") forward of the front edge of the front rail. Until this invention, there were no answers. Now, for the first time in furniture, this invention embodies a spring-edge that is front-rail based, rather than main span spring based. Neither of the members of this new spring-edge concept, upper or lower, depend on or have any connection with, the springs or other cushion support members. This at once emancipates it from all prior strictures, not only as to coping successfully with overhang, but also for the first time able to ensure closure of cushion gap independent of a main span spring point-of-beginning, and, most importantly, provides for the first time fully for a lower upholstery wrapping-edge forward of the front edge of the front rail, and plumb with a similarly extended spring-edge and cushion overhang.